PITTSBURGH—This is where we are in our moment-by-moment world. Never slowing down, never pausing for reflection.

React and regurgitate.

“Everyone’s a tough guy,” said Pittsburgh safety Andrew Taglianetti, “when they have a Twitter account.”

Pitt has underachieved. The Panthers can’t win important games and can’t make critical plays. They can’t hold leads and can’t find a way to win the easiest BCS conference of all while playing with the most talent of any team in the Big East.

“We’ve heard it all before,” Pitt quarterback Tino Sunseri said.

Here’s what you haven’t heard: Sunseri will play for his sixth offensive coordinator this fall. That’s because last December, Pitt introduced its third new coach in less than a year.

When the Panthers open the season this fall against Youngstown State, Paul Chryst will be their fourth coach in two years. They’ll run out of the tunnel at Heinz Field that day, more than half of the current roster of 100 beginning yet another season of transition in a sport that thrives on consistency.

There’s no other way to say it: no group of players has ever been screwed over like these Pitt players.

From Dave Wannstedt to Mike Haywood to Todd Graham to Chryst. Meet your new coach, fellas.

Now go out and make it work in crunch time, play like it’s second nature and don’t—for the love of pigskin—underachieve.

“We had great coaches with (Wannstedt), we respected them and they were let go,” said Pitt guard Chris Jacobson. “Then Graham gets here and we buy into what he’s saying, he leaves and it’s here we go again. Then (Chryst) gets here, and now everyone is buying into what he’s saying.”

Jacobson is then reminded he missed a coach in Haywood.

“Just a handshake,” Jacobson said, “and he was gone.”

The next time you hop on Twitter and scream about Sunseri making a bad throw, or the defense failing to make a stop or how all those elite recruiting classes have never panned out, understand that this group has gone above and beyond what should and could be expected.

In the last two seasons, Pitt has been a handful of plays away from winning the Big East and playing in a BCS bowl. A handful of plays from winning big and never dealing with the distractions of new coaches and new philosophies and hearing about same old Pitt.

In his five years at Pitt, Sunseri has yet to have back-to-back spring practices where he has played in the same offensive system. At one point in his career, Sunseri was playing in a different offense for a bowl game—with an interim coordinator.

Before you talk about Pitt missing an extra point against Cincinnati in 2009 to lose the Big East title, or the failed opportunities in the red zone last year in a one-point loss to West Virginia that cost the Panthers another conference title, walk a few steps—about 300 of them in—in Jacobson’s feet.

Twice in his career at Pitt, the 300-pound starter has had what team doctors call “basketball injuries”—where the articular cartilage tears away from the back of the kneecap and must be replaced with microfracture surgery. That’s right, an orthopedic surgeon drilled holes in the back of Jacobson’s kneecaps—“Like a pothole in the back of your kneecap,” Jacobson says—to allow scar tissue to form and replace the damaged cartilage.

The injury is a non-load bearing injury for the first eight weeks of recovery, and during the first injury, Jacobson was rehabbing at home and living up a hill on campus behind the Petersen Events Center. The escalators weren’t working that winter, and Jacobson had to walk up 300 steps— “I counted them every time,” he says—to get to his home after school or therapy.

“Imagine lugging 300 pounds up and down those stairs—without your foot touching the ground,” he says.

Before you talk about all those NFL draft picks and the talent squandered by Wannstedt, take a look into the world of Taglianetti—another in a long line of players at Pitt who deserved more than they’ve received the last two years.

Taglianetti helped organize a trip of students and student-athletes to Haiti this offseason, spending a week in the earthquake-torn country. He says he wanted to give more of himself; to put in perspective the obstacles he’s facing with yet another coach and see the world in a life-defining light.

Here’s a hard-hitting safety, a special teams demon, who already understands the value of his place in college sports. He says he’s fortunate to be playing at Pitt; honored to be given a scholarship to go to school in exchange for playing football.

He doesn’t think student-athletes should be paid, nor is he complaining about another coach and another system and another transition. He’s more concerned about children in Haiti who must climb a mango tree for dinner.

He’s not letting the excuse of yet another coaching change detract from what could be this fall—just like every other Pitt player hoping for one last chance to make it all right.

“For me to be in the position I’m on, there’s no way it could ever be worse than what those kids experience,” Taglianetti said. “It’s life and death down there. I think about where I’m going out at night, and people down there are worrying about where they’re going get food.”

Last December, after Graham left to accept the job at Arizona State and threw the program into more turmoil, Pitt hired Chryst—a longtime, respected assistant who had developed into one of the nation’s top offensive minds.

Chryst also had played for three coaches in four years at Wisconsin in the late 1980s. Maybe Pitt finally has found the perfect match.

When he was hired, Chryst said, “I just want to help these players be the best they can be.”